The Ore Cannon had its construction on the planet of Raxus Prime.
A massive rail-gun array served as the mechanism for the cannon's purpose: to propel spheres of ore or recycled metal to a space station circling in orbit. This method mirrored the garbage pit cannons that launched waste into the void.
Its creation was motivated by the need to smelt the abundance of scrap metal scattered across the planet, reshaping it into spheres, and then dispatching it to the orbital shipyard for further processing and utilization.
Galen Marek intentionally damaged the Ore Cannon by overloading the rail gun's magnetic emitters. This resulted in an excessively rapid launch of the ore sphere, leading to its catastrophic collision with, and subsequent destruction of, the Star Destroyer manufacturing facility in orbit. The Ore Cannon met its end when Galen Marek used the Force to bring the last remaining Star Destroyer crashing down onto the planet, obliterating both the cannon and the warship.